Click here for printer-friendly version

To the Editor:

I commend the Post for publishing DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson's op-ed, "Drug Legalization Doesn't Work" (Oct. 9). I commend you both for taking the question of drug legalization seriously. Other nations should follow our lead, he says, because U.S. policies have been a "remarkable success." "It is a great myth that there has been no progress in our anti-drug effort," he insists.

The "A" on his report card is that the number of persons who use illegal drugs has declined dramatically -- 9.5 million fewer people today report using illegal drugs than in 1979. But none of that decline has occurred since 1990, when the number of drug users reached 13.5 million. Over the past dozen years, the number of drug users has actually increased slightly. (Click here to view chart). In this time the Federal anti-drug budget has doubled from $9.7 billion in FY 1990 to $19.2 billion in FY 2003.

Actually there are more important measures of a drug policy:

*Are we saving more lives? The number of persons who die each year in the U.S. from the use of illegal drugs has increased steadily from 1979 (when the number of drug users was at an all-time high) to now, from 7,101 in 1979 to 19,102 in 1999, and the death rate has more than doubled from 3.2 per 100,000 to 7.0. (Click here to view chart).

*Is drug use less dangerous to the users? The number of persons going to hospital emergency rooms for adverse reactions to drug use has increased by fifty percent since 1988. (Click here to view chart).

*Is the population needing drug treatment going down? From 1991 through 1998, the number of persons needing drug treatment barely changed, remaining at about 9 million. (Latest data: 2001 White House Drug Strategy, table 42)

How do we measure drug enforcement as a control strategy?

*Is drug enforcement hurting the traffickers? The critical measures of trafficker costs and efficiencies are the prices of heroin and cocaine. With effective drug enforcement, they are supposed to go up. In fact, the prices have steadily plummeted since 1981. (Click here to view chart)

*Is the quality of drugs on the street going down? In fact, the purity has gone up steadily; heroin purity is 500% greater now than in 1981. (Click here to view chart).

DEA enforces the "Controlled Substances Act" but it is a fact that drugs are the most out-of-control substances in our society. That law is an oxymoron. A humane society demands control of drugs. Perhaps our failure to control drugs is due to our prohibition-based strategy. Legal regulation has given us an enormous range of tools to control the commerce and use of everything in our economy, except drugs.

If we are to save more lives than we now are, we must examine the fundamentals of our drug policy. If we continue our current policy without an honest and in-depth debate, we are surrendering to inertia, fear of change, and the exaggerated claims of success by bureaucrats.